Cheryl Kaiser
Cheryl Kaiser is an Associate Professor in the UW Department of Psychology. She is affiliated with the Social/Personality and Diversity Science Research Areas.
Research in the Social Identity Lab explores the interplay between social issues and theoretical insights, formed on the basis of rigorous research with a variety of methods in the laboratory. Our approach highlights how theoretically-driven social psychological science has important implications for social issues, and how real world events provide significant opportunities for advancing theory based research.
Our research addresses social issues including prejudice, diversity, immigration, employment discrimination law, terrorism, the income gap between the rich and poor, and other salient political events (e.g., Hurricane Katrina and Obama's election). The main focus of our research however, is prejudice and discrimination, particularly from the perspective of members of socially devalued, or stigmatized, groups. Specifically, the lab group investigates personal and situational factors that affect whether individuals perceive prejudice-related threats, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral coping responses to prejudice, and the implications of how people cope with prejudice for well being and interpersonal relationships.
Cheryl's research has resulted in numerous papers in leading outlets in the field and has been supported with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Portuguese Science Foundation. Cheryl's graduate students have received fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Cheryl is a recipient of the SAGE Young Scholars Award, awarded by the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology. She has served on the editorial boards for Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Social and Personality Psychological Science, European Journal of Social Psychology, and British Journal of Social Psychology. Outside of the lab, Cheryl enjoys being a mom as well as outdoor pursuits like hiking, snowshoeing, and kayaking.